Letters help ex-Utican recall relationship with parents for book
By DAVID DELLECESE
Observer-Dispatch
October 23, 2006
Former Utica resident Arlene Stein has lived in Florida since 1973, but in her heart, she's never left the city she grew up in.
The author has based her books on her experiences growing up here. The latest, "The Eye of My Apple," examines her relationship with her parents throughout her college years at Eastman School of Music in Rochester.
This month, she will return to the area for a three-day book signing at various venues.
The book, composed of letters of correspondence between Stein and her parents, examines not only her youth and college days in the 1950s, but the role her parents played during those formative years.
The letters, two shoeboxes full, came from her mother some time before she died. She admits she paid no attention to them until both her parents were gone.
Stein and her husband were spending a week at a timeshare, where Stein decided to sit down and finally look at all the letters.
"When I did this I realize all the letters were there, not only the letters from me but vice versa. ... When you look at the book, we were almost writing back and forth almost every day from my four years at Eastman," Stein said.
Stein retyped each of the letters, choosing to use those from the four years of college as her framework, even though the letters continues well into the 1960s and '70s. The letters acted as a "sounding board," where she could "tell them anything" and sometimes even hear some things she didn't want to hear, she said, laughing.
Stein said the book took about ten years to produce.
The tradition of letter writing has continued from Stein and her mother to Stein and her daughter. When her daughter went to Israel, Stein was the one sending her many letters, holding onto copies of the originals, and reprinting them as the second part of her second book, "I Love You Goodbye: A Daughter's Nightmare Journey."
Her memories have led to three novels so far. And while many people talk about writing, Stein is proud of the fact that she has seen her thoughts all the way through to fruition.
"The difference is just do the writing first and be consistent and follow through," she said. "One day I was doing a table at an organization, and a woman walked by and said "I could have written that' and I told her 'yes, you could have, but I did, and that's the difference."
Observer-Dispatch
October 23, 2006
Former Utica resident Arlene Stein has lived in Florida since 1973, but in her heart, she's never left the city she grew up in.
The author has based her books on her experiences growing up here. The latest, "The Eye of My Apple," examines her relationship with her parents throughout her college years at Eastman School of Music in Rochester.
This month, she will return to the area for a three-day book signing at various venues.
The book, composed of letters of correspondence between Stein and her parents, examines not only her youth and college days in the 1950s, but the role her parents played during those formative years.
The letters, two shoeboxes full, came from her mother some time before she died. She admits she paid no attention to them until both her parents were gone.
Stein and her husband were spending a week at a timeshare, where Stein decided to sit down and finally look at all the letters.
"When I did this I realize all the letters were there, not only the letters from me but vice versa. ... When you look at the book, we were almost writing back and forth almost every day from my four years at Eastman," Stein said.
Stein retyped each of the letters, choosing to use those from the four years of college as her framework, even though the letters continues well into the 1960s and '70s. The letters acted as a "sounding board," where she could "tell them anything" and sometimes even hear some things she didn't want to hear, she said, laughing.
Stein said the book took about ten years to produce.
The tradition of letter writing has continued from Stein and her mother to Stein and her daughter. When her daughter went to Israel, Stein was the one sending her many letters, holding onto copies of the originals, and reprinting them as the second part of her second book, "I Love You Goodbye: A Daughter's Nightmare Journey."
Her memories have led to three novels so far. And while many people talk about writing, Stein is proud of the fact that she has seen her thoughts all the way through to fruition.
"The difference is just do the writing first and be consistent and follow through," she said. "One day I was doing a table at an organization, and a woman walked by and said "I could have written that' and I told her 'yes, you could have, but I did, and that's the difference."
